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Stephanie Byrd Project title: Reconciling Ideologies of Autonomy and Commitment: How Young Adults Negotiate Work and Family In popular, scholarly, and political debates on family change, a recurring theme is the tension between individualism and commitment. Cultural criticisms and conservative perspectives on “family values” argue that a shift toward affective individualism is endangering the family and community well-being by propelling young adults toward autonomous lifestyles in which commitment is contingent or actively avoided. Feminists and others argue that traditional gender and family ideologies promote marital dependence and erode individual autonomy, especially for women. My primary research interest is how are ideals of autonomy reconciled with ideals of commitment? Although it has become popular to blame individual “selfishness” for variation in family choices, few studies examine how or why real people manage conflicts between personal development and family commitment. My current research uses semi-structured, open-ended life history interviews with a sample of women and men between the ages of 28 and 35 (n=75) with ties to the New York metropolitan area to examine how and why contemporary young adults reconcile ideals of autonomy and commitment in decision-making about work and family. By acknowledging that individuals’ private lives exist in the context of larger institutional, cultural, and personal contexts, I analyze individual accounts in a much more nuanced manner than is typically available. Unlike previous studies, I investigate a wide range of approaches and place the accounts of men and women as well as the single and married in a comparative framework. This group of young adults, while not representative of all people negotiating autonomy and commitment, is perfectly situated for exploring how an increased emphasis on “the individual” is affecting a changing middle-class and informing emerging patterns. Influenced by the work of family scholars documenting how changes in gender roles have altered expectations about appropriate work-family roles, I examine how and why young adults make sense of personal life choices in relation to their family background, school experiences, work concerns, and future aspirations. The concepts of myth and ritual provide an innovative framework with which to explore these issues. First, my data reveals increased ambivalence about “normative” behavior and exposes how individualization processes factor into particular life-course strategies. As a MARIAL post-doctoral fellow I will analyze how notions of choice, self-development, and self-determination are intertwined with ideals of intimacy, companionship, and family welfare to produce variation in relationship processes. Second, many respondents were beginning to face difficult choices about parenthood, the one factor that challenged women’s pursuit of autonomy more than it did for men. As my data supports, parenthood can significantly alter formerly held strategies of action. While at MARIAL, I want to expand my current work by doing a more focused study on how autonomy is managed by young adults with children. I expect that individuals in dual-earner families most acutely experience the tensions and contradictions associated with reconciling autonomy and commitment. In a political climate where family values are publicly debated, my MARIAL research will help policymakers better serve the needs of individuals struggling to coordinate work, family, and schooling requirements, demands, and preferences. We need to move beyond unnecessarily polarized debates to uncover the strategies ordinary American’s are using to cope with and resolve these dilemmas and to promote ways public policy can help ease their concerns. As the number of dual-earner families continues to rise, further exploration into how individuals resolve needs for autonomy with family commitments is increasingly important.
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